HIMS 661 EHR Optimization Discussion

Hi, Please, read and contribute to peers’ discussion in 100 words minimum each with credible references in APA style.

Peer 1:

When the federal government implemented its meaningful use initiative as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, medical groups finally started to move toward electronic health records in mass. By 2015, nearly 9 in 10 (87%) of office-based physicians had adopted an EHR, and over 3 in 4 (78%) had adopted a certified EHR, according to the Office of the National Coordinator (2020) for Health IT. EHR optimization is the process of fine-tuning an EHR to meet a practice’s individual needs and to improve clinical productivity and efficiency (Shah et al., 2020). Measurement of usability and subsequent optimization efforts should continue after initial EHR implementation.

Three other factors, EHRs should be evaluated for the following three aspects based on human factors engineering: (1) their direct interface with the clinician, (2) their impact on unique workflows of the user’s particular specialty, and (3) the physical environment in which they will reside. The user experience should also be measured specifically for satisfaction and burnout. A plan should also be developed for how selected metrics will be validated for the specific user’s care team role, activity, specialty, and practice setting (Shal et al., 2020). In my opinion, EHR Optimization will be an ongoing process and re-evaluation to ensure that increased quality of care and medical outcomes are maintained within the EHR system. Additionally, EHRs will have a significant lasting impact on paper-based medical records for accuracy, security, and storing of patients’ Personal Health Information. Finally, for the EHR system to meet its goals as it was designed, re-evaluating, and continuing working on any problems that have been discovered, as well as on finding new concerns, is necessary.

Reference

Shah, T., Kitts, A.B., Gold, J. A., Horvath, K., Ommaya. A., Frank, O., Sato, L., Schwarze,G., Upton, M., Sandy, L. (2020). Electronic Health Record Optimization and Clinician Well-Being: A Potential Roadmap Toward Action. NAM Perspect, https://doi: 10.31478/202008a.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology Health IT.gov (2020). About ONC. https://www.healthit.gov/topic/about-onc

Peer 2:

The EHR optimization refers to the process of adjusting electronic health records to align with the workflow of a specific person or function and improve the overall efficiency and productivity of health care activities. Optimization of the EHR system might be needed to ensure that the EHR system is secure and efficient in managing patients’ data. Several strategic optimization techniques should be considered in optimizing the EHR system (Romero & Staub, 2016). Some of these strategies include mapping the organization’s current workflow and contrasting it with electronic health records workflow and the operations that need to be performed.

Additionally, optimizing the EHR system will require the organization to script better methods of introducing the EHR to patients. Moreover, there is a need to observe how individuals use the EHR to determine areas needing more modification and training (Romero & Staub, 2016). It is also important to assess data requirements to ensure that health care providers do not feel that data entry requirements are burdensome. In fact, health organizations should try to identify alternative data sources to help work on the data entry burden. Also, optimizing the EHR system will require healthcare organizations to re-evaluate and keep improving any identified concerns.

In order to optimize the electronic health records systems, there are various aspects that healthcare organizations should invest in (EHR Intelligence, 2022). They should maintain the EHR usability through regular testing and optimization. Working with a well-maintained and up-to-date EHR system is essential for the organization’s operations. Once an EHR system is implemented, healthcare organizations should invest in several summative testing like performance testing, expert review, usability testing, and risk assessment.

Conclusively, healthcare organizations should also consider investing in training employees on better ways of using the EHR system. Deploying sufficient training to healthcare providers offers satisfaction and is crucial to the usability of electronic health records. Therefore, healthcare organizations should improve the adoption of EHR by investing in Electronic health records learning and personalization to support healthcare providers.

References

EHR Intelligence, (2022) 3 Strategies to Enhance EHR Usability Through EHR Optimization. Retrieved from https://ehrintelligence.com

Romero, M. R., & Staub, A. (2016). Specialty task force: a strategic component to electronic health record (EHR) optimization. In Nursing Informatics 2016 (pp. 1051-1052). IOS Press.